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I am still the Hitler of our time. This Hitler has only one objective - justice for his own people, sovereignty for his own people, recognition of the independence of his people and their right to their own resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold. Ten times Hitler, that is what we stand for.
...or, how religion provides evolutionary benefits to believers -- contrary to the claims of antireligionists, who'd have you believe religion is the cause of all wars and unhappiness and what-all else that plagues the world and therefore we'd be better off without it. Or maybe not.
The British Home Office and the Dutch equivalent seem to think gays aren't persecuted in Iran.
Nevermind that homosexuality is punishable with the death penalty in Iran, and executions are still routine. Including that of the boyfriend of the gay man in question. But no, he's in no danger when he gets sent there! Pshaw!
I'm sick of the bashing of "asylum seekers" and "illegal immigrants". It's like Prohibition. Why criminalize something that ought to be a self-evident right, particularly when cases like this one are frequent? Immigration law that is designed to simply keep people out is inherently unjust and nonsensical -- but most people don't think about it because they've never been confronted by it. So it continues.
You may have heard about the ongoing firestorm regarding the speech by and BBC interview with ++Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the Anglican Communion.
The thing is, this is a fascinating case of where both the press (feeding off the Beeb's initial report) and the blogosphere (kneejerk-reacting to the initial Beeb headlines) have got it all wrong, and are collectively creating the Himalayas out of a molehill. There are even calls for ++Rowan to resign for things he never said.
Here, for example, is an interesting comparison of the original Beeb article to a revision that appeared a mere ten minutes later:
Note how the message is subtly changed and the tone less sensationalist. But the initial article was enough to ignite a firestorm on the blogosphere long before anything even went to "press" in meatspace.
Here is another article examining the reaction and counter-reaction:
The problem is that the wire services picked up on the initial article and parroted it mindlessly without checking their sources or going to the original interview and lecture. Which, by the way, was immediately available on ++Rowan's website:
The thing is, what ++Rowan was saying was not that he advocated the introduction of sharia courts in Britain, or even that there should be parallel jurisdictions, and he certainly never meant that Muslims should have their own separate legal identity in Britain. Even his much-quoted word "inevitable" was shorn of its context and made to look like he wanted sharia introduced sooner rather than later.
But none of the subtlety of his attempt to start an honest, intelligent debate about religious law in a secular country came across. His reiteration of the rights of the individual and strong support of the common law were utterly ignored. Instead, verbal images of hands and heads being lopped off in English courtrooms made the rounds, nevermind that it had nothing to do with what he actually said.
What was even more astonishing was how the Times religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill -- who is widely read in Britain and Europe -- seemed to encourage it all, claiming in based on erroneous information in the Daily Telegraph that the Queen was going to dismiss him (which she can't, actually, and anyway she never criticized ++Rowan personally, but rather the ensuing brouhaha -- at least the Telegraph got that much right while getting other facts wrong) and perpetuating some of the other misquotes and distortions. But it sure attracted eyeballs to her blog, where she happily is leading the charge against him, going so far as to say "everyone knows what he said" while conveniently never, ever pointing people to his actual words (as I did above).
It gets better -- such as headlines claiming the Church of England General Synod is angry with him, but fail to mention that he got a standing ovation at his speech to the Synod (reported here).
Mind you, I'm not even arguing for or against what the Archbishop was suggesting. But it sure would be nice to debate what he said on its own merits -- and not based on the inane knee-jerk reactions to quotes taken out of context, or even outright lies.
As far as I am concerned, if I hear a news report, I don't trust anyone anymore. I don't care if it's CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, the BBC, the Economist, the New York Times, or any other publication. Go to the source and make up your own damned mind.
We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as “one theory among others” is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator.
Earlier I was surfing Ship of Fools, a humorous Christian website. You'll notice that they have a link to Richard Dawkins' website, "Dawkins Hell", tongue-in-cheek pointing out the number of self-aggrandizing links on his page currently visible. (You have to admit, that is kinda cute.) So for the hell of it (no pun intended...well, maybe a little), I went over to his site, and ended up in particular in the Backlash Corner.
Of course, I've been there before, and the thing is, I have mixed emotions about it. Naturally, it's good to have critical articles there, and kudos for that. But what's always nauseating for me is the comments. Bilious, hate-filled, inane, nonsensical rage directed against anyone who dares to disagree with the host. Sycophancy is the order of the day. It is rare to see an insightful, thoughtful comment dissecting the article; rarer still to see agreement or criticism of the host. Usually the posters dismiss it out of hand, even though there are some pretty good ones there. Once in a while Dawkins himself shows up with a snide remark at the article writer's expense, but he seldom if ever bothers to really respond with anything of substance. So the whole purpose of the exercise, which was no doubt noble originally, is defeated.
You really needn't bother reading the comments unless you want to read a lot of screeds. Slashdot is informative and insightful by comparison.
Sam Harris' blog is much better, maybe because there are some more thoughtful people there (from both sides) and it's not just a rah-rah echo chamber. What is interesting is even when Harris posts some pretty inflammatory stuff, like this, atheists take him to task:
As an adamant atheist, I disagree. Religion, in its place, provides a vehicle of community and ways for people to learn about themselves and their feelings. Some people NEED this. The problem isn't the conflict of religion and science, the problem is when one tries to trump the other perspective's strength.
The thing that struck me was this: There is the so-called Brights movement, which Dawkins and Harris would both certainly claim to be a part of, even be leading lights in it. But the central aspect of the Brights is really be able to be questioning, and fostering an environment of questioning. You cannot search for truth if you can't ask questions in an open, fair and reasonable environment without just being shouted down. The Brights website mentioned above says:
The constituency of Brights is hugely diverse. Besides those who self-identify as atheist, humanist, secular humanist, freethinker, rationalist, naturalist, agnostic, or skeptic, there are individuals who go by their preferred affiliations, such as Ethical Culturalist, Pantheist, Buddhist, Yogi, Wiccan, Transhumanist, or Unitarian. Also part of the gamut of constituents are Jews, Catholics, Quakers, Episcopalians, and others who may personally maintain their religion’s cultural or aesthetic aspects, but not its supernaturalism. There are professors of religious studies and clergy in and out of practice who are Brights (e.g., Unitarian-Universalist ministers, Protestant pastors, even one ex-Benedictine monk). Not all constituents associate themselves with familiar groupings or labels. The movement’s goals attract all sorts of people who “have a naturalistic worldview” and favor thinking of themselves broadly and in a civic sense, as Brights.
So here we have a sharp contrast -- between Dawkins and Harris. Both of course say things I find pretty shocking at times as a believer. Both I disagree with, often strongly. But which one seems to allow for real questions to be asked? Which one fosters real discussion?
To paraphrase the Bible a bit: By their blogs shall ye know them. ;-)
This story has been brewing for about a year, and from time to time I hear about it and scratch my head a bit. The first time, I thought it was a fluke of one nutjob politician, Karin Wolff, the education minister for the German state of Hessen. (Hessen is the state where Frankfurt is located, right in the middle of Germany.) But the issue just won't die.
You see, Minister Wolff wants to introduce creationism and/or intelligent design into biology classes in schools in Hessen. Here is an early report from Deutsche Welle in English:
The part that I find doubly mind-boggling about this is that the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) and CSU (Christian Social Union) are both actually predominantly Catholic parties. (They are the descendants of the old Zentrum party, which was literally the Roman Catholic Church's mouthpiece in the pre-war period.) In its official teachings, the Roman Catholic Church very clearly denies "intelligent design" and creationism as being scientific. Indeed, as Die Welt points out, Benedict XVI himself chimed in, saying he personally accepts evolutionary theory:
To my knowledge, no one else of authority in the CDU/CSU outside of Hessen backs it, at least not openly. Why the CDU people in Hessen are suddenly pushing this is utterly mystifying to me.
Worse, the presiding minister (equivalent to a governor) of Hessen, Roland Koch (also from the CDU), is supporting Wolff in her ideas...and he's often been touted as a future chancellor.
What is also odd: The main German Protestant church, the EKD (a sort of umbrella of the big regional Lutheran and Reformed churches), has also clearly distanced itself from the idea of teaching intelligent design. Thus neither the Catholics nor the main Protestants want it. So who's really pushing this?
Lovely. Just lovely.
The good news, perhaps, is that all the other parties -- SPD, FDP, Greens and Leftists -- are all decidedly against. So while it is vaguely possible that something may happen in Hessen, there will be a lawsuit challenging it in no time, and Germany's Basic Law does have fairly iron-clad separation of church and state -- and no other party aside from these loons will support creationism or ID getting into schools. Even within the CDU, Annette Schavan, the federal minister for education, said she was against the idea and opposed it.
The other bit of good news is that, as noted above, with her latest speech in favor and Koch's announcing his backing, the EKD quickly announced their opposition, and the Catholic bishop of Limburg as well as the Pope noted their protest -- so hopefully that will also quash any idea of their being a religious basis for wanting this.
Even so, it is astonishing to see people trying to bring it up here in places where you'd least expect it -- in Frankfurt, one of Germany's metropolises. Definitely a case of WTF.
Meanwhile, to add to the WTF element: Karin Wolff, shortly after wanting creationism in schools, announced she's a lesbian in a relationship:
In the previous poll, the subject of Passover laws came up. Smooch, bless him, had a little bit of an outburst when I answered Em's question in brief about why observant Jews don't consume corn syrup during Passover:
Corn/maize isn't kosher only during Passover. During Passover, Jews are supposed to refrain from eating "leaven", that is, products from the five basic grain types defined in the Torah. Some also include other grains and legumes. Since corn falls in that latter group, any corn product isn't kosher, either, including corn syrup. However, interpretations vary, and some don't include corn in the list of things not kosher during Passover -- generally only the stricter Jews do so.
The rules are defined in Leviticus and Exodus, and extended and refined in the Talmud.
Technically these rules don't apply to non-Jewish Christians because we're Gentiles (that is, non-Jews). Thus we're not bound by the original Covenant between God and the Israelites (if you're wondering). So goes the theology, anyway.
Religious laws like that, according to Smooch, are ridiculous. The thing is, the above answer is actually just a summary -- and it is easy to miss the point of why people have such laws and why they are observed. I referred Smooch to the US tax code as a loose parallel, but unfortunately I don't think he got the point.
Try reading this rabbinical article about kosher laws. Yes, it's dripping in references to angels and Talmudic quotes, so Smooch will no doubt find it hideous. But if you get past those references, the essence of the reason for the laws is still there: teaching respect for creation by living that respect through ritual handed down through many, many generations.
The thing is, of course sometimes people lose sight of the origins of those laws or rituals. Our parish priest tells the following joke story as an illustration:
In a monastery, the abbot had a pet cat that was very dear to him and he took it with him wherever he went. The problem was that the cat would caterwaul during vespers whenever the monks did their chants, which would disturb the other monks. So they began tying the cat to a leash outside the church during vespers, and everything worked out OK. Then years later, the cat died, and the abbot, now getting rather old, got a new cat, and as a precaution, they tied the new cat outside as well, just in case the cat also would caterwaul. Then the abbot also died, and the monks kept the cat, still tying it up outside during vespers. Eventually that cat also died, and they couldn't imagine not having a cat, so they got a new one -- and tied that one outside as well. This kept going until eventually, when that monastery's liturgy was compiled, there was a rubric in the book that stated "A cat shall be tied before the door during vespers."
Naturally this is a joke and an extreme case, but so long as we keep in mind what the origins of traditions are and what they are for, they are quite useful. They are anything but ridiculous. They are complicated, but they are not ridiculous. And of course we should always try to keep in mind what those origins are, by researching them. I think traditions are good things to be upheld and maintained and well-oiled, adjusted when necessary, not tossed on the dustheap. We stand on the shoulders of giants not just in science, but in religion and philosophy as well. Our ancestors knew to respect creation far better than we ever did, and I think those religious laws are a good way to understand how to do it by living it.
The similarity, by the way, with the US tax code is this: it too was set up to achieve a social purpose, ended up being quite complex, much of the origins of its provisions have been forgotten and it often seems onerous, but people obey it anyway. The advantage to religions traditions, though, is at least we have something of a choice in obeying them.
First, a brief video from Sir John Polkinghorne, a quantum physicist and Anglican priest, who discusses his own beliefs and how they intersect with science:
Second, an exchange between the blog owner, The Very Rev. David Simmons (vicar of an Episcopal church in Kentucky) and the maintainer of the Blasphemy Challenge. Interesting stuff -- part of an ongoing dialog between the team of AskThePriest.org and the Blasphemy Challenge RRS. (Unfortunately, the RRS people haven't been covering themselves in glory with some of their responses. "And acordingly to the bible, Earth is 6k years old." Ouch.)
On Multiply, I'm definitely getting targeted as a resident Bible-thumper by its admuncher, and in particular an ad for this load of hooey keeps coming up.
That has to be the most outrageous waste of time and money I have seen in a long time. WWJD? Tell the morons demanding the money for such pie in the sky to give it to the poor instead and not inflame passions in the already unstable Middle East by planting a big freakin' cross in the middle of a bunch of Muslims.
Un. Be. Liev. A. Bull.
Dear Mutiply Advertiser: Your advertising dollars are being thoroughly wasted on my eyeballs. On second thought, please continue to waste them on my eyeballs so that some unsuspecting gullible sap doesn't see it and actually contribute to your heinous cause.
Since I like to try and present other faces of Christianity from the usual Bible-thumpers you run into, here is one I ran across that I find pretty interesting. She is a lesbian, former atheist, and current skeptic who converted to Christianity upon partaking in Communion. She wrote a book by this title:
'Mine is a personal story of an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion, told by a very unlikely convert: a blue-state, secular intellectual; a lesbian, a left-wing journalist with a habit of skepticism. I'm not the person my reporter colleagues ever expected to see exchanging blessings with street-corner evangelists. I'm hardly the person George Bush had in mind to be running a “faith-based charity.” My own family never imagined that I'd wind up preaching the Word of God and serving communion to a hymn-singing flock.'
'But as well as an intimate memoir of personal conversion, mine is a political story. At a moment when right-wing American Christianity is ascendant, when religion worldwide is rife with fundamentalism and exclusionary ideological crusades, I stumbled into a radically inclusive faith centered on sacraments and action.'
'And so I became a Christian, claiming a faith that many of my fellow believers want to exclude me from; following a God my unbelieving friends see as archaic superstition. At a time when Christianity in America is popularly represented by ecstatic teen crusaders in suburban megachurches, slick preachers proclaiming the “gospel” of prosperity, and shrewd political organizers who rail against evolution, gay marriage and stem-cell research, it's crucial to understand what faith actually means in the lives of people very different from one another. Why would any thinking person become a Christian? How can anyone reconcile the hateful politics of much contemporary Christianity with Jesus' imperative to love? What are the deepest ideas of this contested religion, and what do they mean in real life?
'In this book I look at the Gospel that moved me, the bread that changed me and the work that saved me, to begin a spiritual and an actual communion across the divides.'
Meanwhile over here in Krautland you can buy fashionista MLB ballcaps at the local sports store (I say fashionista, because they aren't actually in team colors -- they're either black with a white logo or beige or some other color). So they have gear for the Yankees, lots of it (surprise surprise), plus the Braves and the Indians and the White Sox. (Presumably all this because of rappers -- and the young whippersnapper Tchermans are imitating them, not turning into budding baseball fans.)
But they also have one team's ballcaps that actually are in their real team colors. One team and one team only. Which one? The effing PHILLIES.
What. The. Fuck?! The shittiest team in baseball history? The team that was the first to lose ten thousand games? So they sell these ballcaps so some poor young unsuspecting German can prove how clueless they are about baseball?
Ach look, I heff bought zis totally kewl ballkep und I em really kewl! I heff ze Fillees on my kopf! Ja ja! I em goink to show all my friends how kewl I em mit zis Fillees ballkep! Ah! I am lookink on ze Internetz on ze standinks to see how ze Fillees are doink und OH MEIN GOTT I EM SUCH A DUMMKOPF!
(Yes, I know, some rappers wear Phillies gear. But still, that was the first thought that crossed my mind when I saw the caps. :-) )
If you wanted more evidence of what the mainstream media isn't worth our trust anymore (if they ever were), here is an interesting blog entry from the Episcopal Church concerning a news story in the New York Times involving a former porn producer and actor wanting to become an Episcopal priest.
The reason I bring up this story is that at least it's not a political one, so hopefully people won't prejudge it based on their political views. (Meanwhile the Episcopal Church's reputation could hardly get worse. :P ) But I've seen quite a lot such stories in the news lately where I know full well that the "facts" in the story in various newspapers are just flatly wrong or highly selective, and what's worse, there is no obvious rhyme or reason to why they were being so selective -- with the result being a hugely distorted and misleading picture, and of course most people don't take the time to corroborate the story themselves.
Meanwhile, before anyone gets the wrong idea: Yes, everyone is welcome in the Episcopal Church. That doesn't mean they can instantly become clergy. Becoming a priest, even a deacon, takes years, and is not something just casually done because you want to, and not everyone is necessarily cut out to be a priest.
